Sliding Down the Slippery Slope

In an article worth a full reading, Nathan Winograd gives chapter-and-verse on the lengthy BLM/CRT support for, not just bestiality/"zoophilia", but all manner of animal abuse (at least when committed by BIPOCs). He writes:

In addition to trying to normalize bestiality by controlling the language we use to discuss it, [North Dakota State University professor Anastassiya] Andrianova, like [Duke University professor Kathy] Rudy before her, is trying to coopt the social movement for marriage equality, even though the latter represents a difference of kind, not degree. Andrianova and Rudy, as well as [Ph.D. candidate Jess] Ison, conflate criticism of bestiality with homophobia and patriarchy, with Ison claiming in The Zoo Closet: On Whether Bestiality is a Queer Liberation Ethic, that “fears about bestiality arose from controlling both women’s sex and same-sex relations” and Andrianova complaining that laws against bestiality were passed at the same time and for the same reasons as those proscribing “non-procreative sex” between consenting adult humans.

Given that “the vast majority of discussions around bestiality existed [historically] in the twinned realms of moral theology and juridical practices” that had their roots in “the book of Leviticus,” Rudy further wonders why,

Humans can kill animals, force them to breed with each other, eat them… hunt them, nail them down and cut them open for science, and for the most part, the humans who perform those acts can be thought of as normal, functioning members of society. Yet having sex with animals remains an almost unspeakable anathema.

. . . But offering countervailing arguments about when and why animals go into heat or their level of sentience does not feel commensurate with what is being advocated. It puts me at a loss. Responding with incredulity and denouncing the claims without the restraint of civility seems more appropriate, but doing so runs the risk of embracing a logical fallacy, such as an appeal to force or ad hominem. Responding dispassionately and measuredly, however, risks reducing the rape of animals to an academic exercise that (falsely) suggests reasonable people can differ. They cannot and it pains me that anyone would need to be convinced of this.

Quite simply, there is no atrocity against animals that CRT/queer theory professors will not defend. And not only do they embrace abuse, they do so by disparaging gay people and people of color, turning the fight for equality into the promotion of disparity and the struggle for the right to live with dignity into an appeal to depravity.

Indeed, without pre-existing theological commitments, I too would view the issue as an academic exercise. And in the politics of the day, the conflict between the interests of zoophiles/pedophiles on the one hand and animals/children on the other will be decided in the same way that the conflict between interests of pregnant women and their unwanted fetuses has been resolved: only one side of these conflicts can vote Democrat.

As it happens, I do have pre-existing theological commitments, and they do come straight from Leviticus (and every other part of the Bible, while we're at it). As he makes clear, Winograd is happy to abandon Leviticus as a source of moral instruction, understanding it correctly as inconvenient to his and the Left's other political commitments. He is now having to grapple how thin his remaining defenses actually are now that the Left is coming for Fido. His remaining choices are to either go on about "sentience" or point-and-sputter. The future does not bode well for Fido.

Dallas Buyer’s Club

I saw the movie Dallas Buyer’s Club on DVD.  Several thoughts:

It’s a very well-done movie, and I recommend it with the caveat that people, gay or straight, who tend to contract HIV also tend to lead dirty lives.  In this, the movie is more honest than much of not only contemporary discourse but also dramatic portrayals going back to Philadelphia.  Be forewarned.

I align with other reviewers who recognize in DBC a tale of a benevolent entrepreneur taking on a predatory big government bureaucracy, in this case the FDA backed up by the IRS and DEA.  But . . . how much if this is actually true?

The Wikipedia page on DBC concentrates on the character and sexuality of Ron Woodroof, whose own article is woefully short.  Similarly, the page on AZT has nothing on the drug’s history during the 1980s.

The reason I ask about this is that, in my recollection of the time, backed up at least by this brief paragraph on its cost, AZT was very much in demand from patients and “AIDS Activists” in the late 1980s, with popular pushes to secure insurance company funding of the expensive treatment and expedite FDA approval in the face of doubts about its actual efficacy.  (This was the subject of at least one episode on the 80s legal drama L.A. Law.)

But in DBC’s telling, the FDA is cramming AZT down people’s throats at the behest of Big Pharma, while Ron is learning from de-licensed doctors in Mexico that AZT is toxic and that better drugs are available everywhere except the U.S.  My reading from the links above hint that this is mostly exaggeration:  AZT is still part of the cocktail used to arrest HIV today, although it is true that in the high doses originally prescribed, and in the absence of other drugs to control its adverse side effects, its usefulness was limited.  Meanwhile, DDC, the “good drug” in the movie, isn’t even used anymore.

In the end, after being diagnosed with AIDS in 1985, Ron Woodroof died in 1992 – seven years later.  For all his self-medicating, this strikes my recollection as about par for the time.  In consideration of all this, it’s hard to see in Ron’s real-life story the libertarian parable that DBC makes it out to be.

Incongruities

Am I the only one that sees a disconnect between this story:

CO Fired After Raising Funds From Strip Clubs

Stars and Stripes | Feb 19, 2014 | by Audrea Huff

The commanding officer and master chief of a Florida-based Navy missile unit have been relieved of their duties after an investigation found that adult-entertainment businesses were solicited in a fundraising effort for a Navy Submarine Ball, the Navy said Tuesday.

In a news release, the Navy said that [Naval Ordnance Test Unit at Cape Canaveral, Fla commander Capt. John P.] Heatherington affiliated the service with "businesses that are not representative" of the Navy or the Department of Defense's standards. He was relieved "due to loss of confidence in his ability to command and for promoting an unprofessional command climate," the release said.

and this one?

Gay, Lesbian Troops Perform in Drag at Fundraiser

Stars and Stripes | Mar 03, 2014 | by Travis J. Tritten

KADENA AIR BASE, Okinawa -- Since the repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, U.S. military bases have hosted a gay marriage ceremonies and a potluck gatherings. But on Saturday, servicemembers here may have been the first to take to the stage and perform as drag queens on a military installation in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender troops.

Drag queens and drag kings, to be precise.

Six servicemembers -- gay, lesbian and straight -- donned heavy makeup to dance and lip sync songs such as "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" for a raucous capacity crowd at the Rocker NCO Club at Kadena Air Base. The event was a fundraiser for the recently formed Okinawa chapter of OutServe-SLDN, which is the largest nonprofit advocate for the military's LGBT community.

Full Faith and Credit

From Volokh, quoting Blackwell v. Haslam:

This appeal involves the Full Faith and Credit Clause and firearm rights. The petitioner was convicted of felony drug offenses in Georgia. The State of Georgia granted the petitioner a full pardon for his crimes; his Georgia pardon expressly restored his right to possess a firearm.

The petitioner now resides in Tennessee. A Tennessee statute provides that it is a felony for a person who has been convicted of a felony drug offense to possess a firearm, and it does not make an exception for persons who have been pardoned for their crime. The petitioner filed this declaratory judgment action against the State of Tennessee, seeking a declaration that, because he received a pardon for his drug offenses in Georgia, he can purchase or possess a firearm in Tennessee without violating the Tennessee statute.

The trial court held in favor of the petitioner, concluding that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution requires Tennessee to recognize Georgia’s pardon in full and to permit the petitioner to carry a firearm in Tennessee. The State of Tennessee now appeals.

On appeal, we consider the public-policy exception to the Full Faith and Credit Clause. We hold that Tennessee’s public policy on the restoration of firearm rights for a convicted non-violent drug felon is not entirely inconsistent with Georgia’s public policy, so the public-policy exception to full faith and credit is not applicable in that situation. However, Tennessee public policy proscribes the restoration of firearm rights for a convicted violent drug felon, contrary to Georgia’s public policy allowing the restoration of firearm rights for all felons, violent or not. This Tennessee policy implicates public safety so as to warrant application of the public-policy exception to the Full Faith and Credit Clause under the appropriate circumstances....

As one of Volokh’s commenters pointed out, this case rather directly implicates the recognition in traditional marriage states of gay marriages procured in other states.  I don’t want to seem naive here:  our lawless judiciary will reason on gun control and gay marriage as necessary to get what it wants on gun control and gay marriage.  That said, it’s pretty obvious that traditional marriage states have public policy exceptions to gay marriage, and their option to preserve marriage against other states is specifically granted in what remains of DOMA.

The Slope Keeps Slipping

The  good little liberals indulging themselves in a spot of moral outrage over Cord Jefferson’s Gawker piece on pedophilia (H.T.:  Trumwill, although Ace reported on it earlier) may reveal a residual moral sense not quite purged by their embrace of gay marriage.  But all their invective, justifiable as it may be, only reveal an unprincipled exception.  Having discarded the idea that sex has a moral purpose beyond what people decide to make of it, they have drawn an arbitrary line in the sand with regard to children.  Perhaps even Ta-Nehisi knows that in the long run it will never hold, and he is very afraid.

Faggotry Ruins Everything

I see USAFA now has a sodomy club.

I was watching the John Wayne movie The Green Berets.  There is a scene in which Sgt Petersen (Jim Hutton) is adopted as surrogate father by a little Vietnamese boy running around the Montagnard camp.  When Sgt. Petersen realizes the boy doesn’t have a place to sleep, he pulls him into the cot with him.

Ray Kellogg obviously felt completely confortable in 1968 directing this scene without a hint of impropriety or sexual overtones.  It’s kind of jarring to see the scene today, and thought provoking how jarring it has become.  I would be shocked to see such a scene, directed in this way in this context, appear in a movie today.  I think that fact is pretty hateful.

The End of Egalitarianism

Ross Douthat faces off with Dan Savage in a Bloggingheads debate on the role of monogamy in marriage and, parenthetically, the effect of widespread gay marriage on sexual exclusivity.

Before I comment on the specifics, let me recommend the entire debate as well worth the watch.  I would add the caveat that even if we take Dan’s protestations of concern for marital stability as being made in good faith, I should note that not all advocates of gay marriage share that concern.  Dan’s may be the public face that the gay community likes to show to mainstream audiences, but other homosexuals are more forthcoming about the hope that extending marriage to gays will undermine the social “privilege” of marriage in general.

That said, I was particularly struck with this exchange:

Dan is a fag, but he makes a point not unfamiliar to this corner of the blogosphere:  the history of marital dissolution is mostly the story of female emancipation.  Ross, as a mainstream so-con, really doesn’t want to go there for regrettable if understandable reasons.  But he makes the forceful rebuttal that Dan’s proposed alternative – that standards of monogamy be subject to ongoing negotiation – inevitably benefits the stronger half of the relationship at the expense of the weaker half.  Prior to 40 years ago, the stronger half was almost always the husband;  thus, our culture yet carries around in its collective memory the image of the philandering Don Draper.  Our society’s ongoing effort to elevate the status of women at the expense of men makes this image increasingly anachronistic.

Given the differences between the preferences of men for polygamy and women for hypergamy, Dan is naïve in believing that greater egalitarianism strengthens marriage, and it is cold comfort to a man getting screwed over in family court to know that somewhere, a woman is also getting screwed over.

DADT Humor

The graphic below may or may not be circulating among Powerpoint presentations given at local military CC calls:

Don’t Be a Fag.

Via HitCoffee, the LDS statement on Salt Lake City’s impending decision to give protected status to homosexuals:

Like most of America, our community in Salt Lake City is comprised of citizens of different faiths and values, different races and cultures, different political views and divergent demographics.

Uh oh.

Across America and around the world, diverse communities such as ours are wrestling with complex social and moral questions. People often feel strongly about such issues. Sometimes they feel so strongly that the ways in which they relate to one another seem to strain the fabric of our society, especially where the interests of one group seem to collide with the interests of another.The issues before you tonight are the right of people to have a roof over their heads and the right to work without being discriminated against. But, importantly, the ordinances also attempt to balance vital issues of religious freedom.  In essence, the Church agrees with the approach which Mayor Becker is taking on this matter.

In drafting these ordinances, the city has granted common-sense rights that should be available to everyone, while safeguarding the crucial rights of religious organizations, for example, in their hiring of people whose lives are in harmony with their tenets, or when providing housing for their university students and others that preserve religious requirements.

Right.  After all, giving protected status to, say, blacks encouraged them to be on their best behavior.

Except . . . oops, it didn’t.  The ink was barely dry on the 1964 Civil Rights Act before the image of peaceful protestors in their Sunday best was shed in favor of  running amok.

This should have been expected.  Before the Civil Rights movement, minorities gained acceptance by assimilating to majority social norms, not by expecting the majority to provide them special accommodations.  I would argue that homosexuals have benefitted from this assimilation; indeed, from what I understand, gay men have an overall positive reputation, “gay pride” marches notwithstanding.  They are regarded as conscientious tenants, for instance, and have in fact secured an above-average economic status for themselves.

But no straight man wants to be around a fag.

Unfortunately, anti-discrimination laws clear out this middle ground.  Although I can’t find the exact text of the ordinance before the Salt Lake City governing body, I infer from the description that it prohibits discrimination against gays but has some kind of religious exemption.  I’m guessing that any lawyer would advise his clients that if they want to avail themselves of this exemption, they must at a minimum publish the policy in advance.  A lawyer would probably advise against saying to a potential employee or tenant, we’ll be happy to take you on irrespective of your sexual preference, but:  don’t be a fag, i.e. don’t make your dysfunctional sexuality an issue for those around you.

The homosexual lobby is very coy about defining what constitutes the essence of “gayness”.  Sometimes they speak of their condition as an orientation or predisposition; at other times they dismiss the argument that prohibitions on sodomy and same-sex marriage apply to everyone equally.  But operationally, it’s apparent to me that gayness is about behavior; ergo, the protection of gayness in the law makes attempts at regulating behavior at best suspect and at worst flatly forbidden.  The incentives with respect to assimilation are thus inverted:  the more you act like a fag, the greater the protection you enjoy.

Nothing good will come of this, and its disappointing that the LDS hasn’t the wit to see that, religious exemptions to contrary, such ordinances undermine the very ground from which they hope to defend Biblical moral standards on sex and family.

Elect-a-New-People (DREAM) Act Fails -- for Now

Fox has it here.

Oddly, the amnesty angle is running third in the press coverage behind the repeal of the bans on homosexual behavior in the Armed Forces and abortions on military installations.

I hadn't realized until this morning the Dems had rolled three poison-pill provisions in this legislation at once, yet I found the news oddly comforting. Surely the Left were putting on a big show for the base, knowing in advance that they couldn't get that much done at once.

Right?

Coda on Prejean

This story is disappointing, obviously. While the erstwhile Miss California should not have been persecuted for her honest answer to a question about gay marriage, she had every obligation to make the public appearances on behalf of the Miss America organization that her contract required and for which there is no conceivable conscience exemption.

But this bit of "reporting" was ridiculous:

Last month, Trump decided that Prejean would be allowed to keep her crown despite racy photos of the 22-year-old surfacing on the Internet.

[snip]

In addition to the semi-nude photo scandal, Prejean's reign as Miss California also created headlines at the Miss USA pageant in April after she answered a question from Perez Hilton regarding her stance on gay marriage. She said she believed marriage "should be between a man and a woman."

Gotta love the way photos "surface on the internet." It's not like there was any agency involved, like for instance by a photographer who took pictures in which the nudity was entirely inadvertent.

But what's this "in addition" business? Nobody was interested in the photos until the "gay marriage" question. That's what the controversy was about. Only after the press decided to punish her did they seize at the pictures.

Glaivester on Same Sex Marriage

Glaivester makes an interesting observation about "same sex marriage" proponents:

[T]hey scoff at the idea that same-sex marriage will weaken marriage: "how," they ask, "will letting more people get married weaken marriage?" The answer, of course, is that it will weaken marriage by removing the particulars that make marriage marriage.

If I were to insist that Rush Limbaugh's (or Randall Terry's) ideas were to be labelled "feminist" or that Jesse Helms be placed in the camp of the "anti-racists," the leftists would have a field day. Obviously in that case they can see why increasing their nominal number weakens, and not strengthens, them. But in the end they do not care about marriage, or see it as a mere legal contract no different than, say a business partnership, so the idea that the same principle applies is completely foreign to them.

Mmmm . . .

In many respects, political labels like "feminist" or "conservative" serve as expressions of tribal loyalty, and we adopt these labels to align ourselves with a specific group of people. I say, "I'm a conservative" because I want the status of having people associate me with the great conservatives like Ronald Reagan and William Buckley, and not associate me with all those whiny liberals like Ted Kennedy and George W. Bush. The status of "married guy" functions in a parallel way. For one thing, "married guy" status is a huge step up from "unmarried loser" for almost any man over 30. It buys us a level of social and professional credibility that was hitherto withheld. It grants us entrance into the "married guy" club doing "married guy" things with other married guys. We are therefore properly concerned that the value of our membership will be diluted by the presence of homosexual males; first, such presence would corrupt "like things" with "unlike things"; second, and more specifically, the status of "homosexual male" is one to which no heterosexual aspires to outside of the precincts of New York's fashion community.

But of course, political labels often mean much more. No doubt, most of the people adopting the label "feminist" do so out of adherence to a specific policy program, one that Rush Limbaugh doesn't share. And since our discussion of political issues trades in shorthand that allows us to discuss these programs with labels like "feminist" rather than describing the program anew at every blog post, liberals would rightly object that the value of the shorthand becomes diluted if their opinions are mixed with those of Rush Limbaugh.

What, then, is the analogue to marriage? Are "married guys" devoted to a policy program? To the extent children are involved, we might be able to make some generalizations; however, these generalizations would be weak, certainly compared to other generalizations like "Christian," for instance, describes a certain child-rearing philosophical program, and a set of priorities about what our common social space should look like. But since almost everybody get married eventually, the "married" club is too diverse to agree on what a policy program should look like.

Inductivist on Gay Marriage

In the course of point about gay marriage, Ron Guhname over at Inductivist makes a good point:

Much of the country has rejected [traditional sexual morality], and the division has been dismantling and discrediting the old system. Even if a kid is raised the old way, he can always say, but my buddies' parents don't believe that. What once was authoritative is now just one viewpoint, one lifestyle.

The reigning morality has become, choose for yourself the moral way. All too often, that means choose the selfish, short-sighted way. In my view, the result has been: more out-of-wedlock births; more divorce; more mother-only famlies; more men not civilized by marriage and fatherhood; more disappearing fathers; less child support; more welfare dependency; more poor kids; more crime; more STDs; more abortion; more girls who are pumped and dumped a hundred different times.

Well said. The sex drive is very strong. Thus, it's fetters must be equally strong if it is to be channeled in a constructive direction. Ron is correct that the apotheosis of "choice" has so far been unequal to the task.

I've been meaning to write an omnibus post on the issue of gay marriage, tying together some of my comments over at Hit Coffee. But not today.

Children in Politics

I don't know what to think about this:

Or rather, I think several things simultaneously:

- It's cute and fun to see small children enthusiastically support political causes for which I have sympathy.

- Has anyone really been persuaded to a particular position on an issue by people waving signs? Or perhaps its about motivating the base to go to the polls. That makes sense if you live in an area, as do these children, where there is more of your base than your opponents' base.

- I'm uncomfortable with using children as proxies in political advocacy. It's dishonest. Not as dishonest in this case as when busloads of children showed up in D.C. to rally for legislation that allegedly affected them, as we saw during the Clinton Administration; this was a front for adult agendas. But still: it's representing the children as having a considered opinion on an issue that they most probably lack. (Then again, in the case of Florida's Amendment 2, the issue really is simple enough for an eight-year-old when considered under a religious paradigm.)

- I don't really want to communicate to my own kids that the essence of politics is waving signs at street corners. I rather want to teach them: First gain knowledge. Second, pursue understanding. Then, and only then, should they advocate. I believe too many people get this exactly backward: we start with our position, we then master a set of arguments in favor of that position, and rarely if ever get around to learning any facts that drive those arguments.

- [New] Did you check out the Mom that posted the video? Now that's the secret of a winning political campaign: having hot babes on your team.

Outrage of the Week

Read the WaPo story on the Montgomery County Maryland public schools teaching that homosexuality is fine and dandy. The money quote:

And although a parent does have a right to control the upbringing of a child, "that right is not absolute. It must bend to the State's duty to educate its citizens," the state board wrote.

The American Family Association has a letter-writing campaign going that's worth supporting. However, the legal challenge sounds pretty lame to me, though I'm not a lawyer. Ultimately, this kind of issue will be won or lost in the political arena, as it should be.

As I've written elsewhere, the enthusiasm among the left for ass-buggers has almost nothing to do with health or civil-rights, and everything to do with sticking it to Christians. It's the political ethnic cleansing of conservatives from Montgomery County, or their children from the public schools. Brilliant in its way, when you consider that we can't fight back.